Various systems such as ones employing mechanical, electronic, ultrasonic, electromagnetic and optical techniques have been used in connection with recording movements of a human jaw. One typical solution includes attaching physical markers to both maxilla and mandible and recoding their respective relative motion. Such systems are known to include visualization of the measured or detected movement on a display, possibly as applied to e.g. a digital surface model of cranial hard tissue.
Regardless the technology, the work-flow involved in these procedures is often time-consuming and laborious as it may include using separate apparatus and operations performed individually and separate from each other. These operations may include attaching markers to the anatomy, generating jaw movements and detecting and recording the movements of the markers, and generating a model visualizing the jaw movements which may then be shown on a display. For one, in case modelling of the jaw movements is visualized as a separate process afterwards and it is only then realized that additional movement information would be needed or be desirable, to enhance the digital motion model, this will not be possible until the next time one will be able to harness the patient with the markers and detect and record the jaw movements anew.
Examples of the prior art to track jaw motions include systems described in patent publications U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,836,778, 4,859,181, US 2013/0157218 and WO 2013/0175018.